President Obama joins Facebook, just a few years late

He even included a video in his first post

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Add President Barack Obama to Facebook's 1-billion-plus users.

The POTUS has joined the most popular social network on the planet, a surprising development as one would think he'd have gotten a page up at some point during his seven years in office. While there are other Obama pages, those are run by the White House or various fundraising groups. This is straight Obama, coming at you direct from a URL that, interestingly, includes "POTUS." One of our editors speculated this could mean the page is reserved for future presidents.

In his inaugural Facebook post, Obama writes he hopes users will "think of this as a place where we can have real conversations about the most important issues facing our country - a place where you can hear directly from me, and share your own thoughts and stories."

While we're sure the president will talk about important topics like health care and the economy, he also notes his page will feature "some just-for-fun stuff, too."

The first POTUS post

In addition to serving as an introduction to his page, President Obama's first post includes a description and video of him walking through his backyard - a.k.a. the literal national park behind the White House.

He casually strolls across the lawn, talking about a fox and a hawk named Lincoln he's seen there. He segues into a message about preserving this park, all national parks and the planet by acting on climate change.

Obama discusses US leadership to combat climate change, the upcoming meetings in Paris, and ends with a call to action to viewers to get passionate about and start acting on the issue, including on the very platform he just joined.

At the time of writing, the president's video had been seen 78,000 times with over 5,050 likes (Update: Views are now up to 128,000 and likes topping 9,328, and counting).

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, is the top comment, writing: "Welcome to Facebook, President Obama! Excited for you to have your very own Page - and looking forward to the conversation (and the just-for-fun stuff)."

If you want to see the president's page for yourself, it's got a few other photos and milestones you might be interested in.